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Letter: 15

April 30,1995

      DEAR TODD: We have been hearing, from your mother about how great you are doing in school and we are proud and thrilled about it. I knew you were smart and could do fine and you have been proving it. I hope you will always keep it up because the more you learn the easier it is to learn about other things. We want you to be well and happy and I think the satisfaction of this accomplishment will help give you a lot of happiness. That will make us happy because we love you very much.

      Sometimes I don't write because I have to do some hard thinking trying to come up with something that might be of interest. I got to thinking about the time I spent in the Philippines when I was in the Army Air Corps — They didn't have a separate Air Force then. The Air Corps was part of the Army during World War II. I hope the following reminiscences will be of interest.

      Before I went into the army I was working for Douglas Aircraft Company. They were making fighter-bombers and military transport planes. I was deferred several times because I was working in a defense plant but I got to thinking that the young military personnel I would see must think I was a draft dodger or a 4-F, and besides I thought that I should serve along with the rest of them. I enlisted in the Air Corps and went into pilot training. By that time it was late in the war. Most of the fellows in my class had taken flying lessons before going in and they were way ahead of me. I flew some, but I was behind a lot of them and they "washed" me out. Since I was good at mathematics and did well in the schooling, they wanted me to go to navigation school. I now wish that I had done so, but I had an idea that if I went into aviation mechanic school I might become a crew chief on a B-29 — the big one at that time. Also I thought it would give me some practical training that might help me land a job with an airline in maintenance and get the benefits of free air travel, etc.

      I was doing fine in aviation mechanic school, getting all grades over 90% and the next thing I see is a notice on the bulletin board with my name and several others to report to Lincoln Army Air Base (2nd Air Corps Base) for reclassification to become a stenographer. I had wanted to become a pilot (and perhaps a hero) but they put me in a damned girls' job. Boy did I wish I had gone to navigation school! No stenographers are heroes.

      I worked in the Judge Advocate Office at Lincoln Air Base. Later I was transferred to Colorado Springs and worked in the Statistical Control Unit and was later sent to the Philippines. After I was there a few months the war ended but we had to stay several months more because there was no way they could ship everyone home all at once.

      There were mountains of supplies and all sorts of equipment, and a great surplus of vehicles. On Sundays, a sergeant who worked in the motor pool would check out a vehicle and the mess sergeant would put up a lot of food and we would take a drive and have a cookout for our noon meal. They furnished us a Coleman stove to cook with. He always took a command car because it had 4-wheel drive. There were a lot of mud holes but we never got stuck. The command car was supposed to be for high ranking officers but by that time no one cared.

      We could get chewing gum at the PX real cheap and we all took several packages with us. When we were passing through a village the kids would come out onto the road and put up two fingers and say "Victory Joe" and we would count them and throw out a stick of gum for each kid. In that climate their houses were fresh air huts with a roof. Each village had quite an impressive church built there by the Catholic Church. The Spaniards brought the Catholic religion with them about 400 years ago. The US took the Philippines away from Spain in the Spanish-American War. There would be a pretty good school house built by the Americans. All the other buildings were little better than shacks.

      One day we were stopped near some grassy land fixing our meal and we noticed a little kid tending some cattle. Every once in a while he would go over to one particular animal and it would kneel down. He would get on and then the critter would get up and he would ride it to get the other cattle that had wandered off his parents' property. The other guys thought that was quite remarkable. I told them that I was good with live stock and could get the animal to do that for me. The kid and the trained animal were about 50 yards from us and I went over and asked him if the animal would let me ride him. He said, "Sure he will. You have to pat him on the shoulder and say "dig" to get him to kneel down and then you have to pull up on the wire and say "hood" and he will get up. I did it and the steer was very obedient and I rode him awhile. I told the little kid, "I want to trick those guys. I don't want them to be able to do it. I'll give you a peso if you won't tell them how to get him to, obey. If they don't catch on, I'll give you another peso (50 cents)."I held out the second peso just in case they caught on and bribed him too.

      I went back to our camp and told them there was nothing to it if you knew how to handle animals. They got to arguing that they could do it too. I told them "I'll bet every one of you guys 5 pesos each that you can't get the animal to do it."(The kid had told me that you had give the verbal command as well as the slap or the animal absolutely wouldn't obey). They all went over and tried it — all four of them. I won 20 pesos. The easiest $10 I got in the Philippines.

      We always had a surplus of food and on the way home we would stop by some Philippine family's to visit them for a while and give them our surplus food. They were very grateful. I thought most of them were good people and liked them that I got to know a little.

      During the rainy season it was hot and steamy. One month it rained over 30 inches. I didn't mind it because we had ponchos and helmet liners that made good rain hats. All that rain made everything green. I went swimming on the west side of the Island, Luzon, in the China Sea. I sure loved that warm water to swim in. The hot muggy climate gave a lot of us heat rash and when they didn't have good sanitary conditions I had a lot of diarrhea.

      I had managed to finagle some rare edition Manila newspapers announcing the Japanese surrender and wanted to bring them home. One night when we had had creamed chicken on toast (known as shit on a shingle) I got a terrible case of diarrhea. I woke up with a great pain in my abdomen. A lot of other guys had been up ahead of me and one of them told me that I better take some paper because it was all used up. There went my rare newspapers. From that time on, on Monday morning I would wait until someone came back from breakfast and ask what was for breakfast. If the answer was S.O.S. I slept a little longer and then went to the mess hall just before it closed and got a canteen cup full of coffee and a large piece of bread. We would fill the canteen cup (about 2/3 of a quart) with coffee, put a lot of condensed milk and sugar in it, stir it and then let it settle. Then we drank about 2/3 of it, leaving the dregs in the bottom and at the same time washing down the bread.

      Someone should have been court-martialed for the negligence of giving hundreds of us diarrhea. It happened because we had chicken on Sunday. Then Monday morning we would have creamed chicken on toast. But the trouble was that the chicken hadn't been refrigerated — we had no refrigeration at that time. By the time it was made into creamed chicken it had started to spoil.

      When we first got there we had only an outhouse to go to and the flies were terrible. It was very rainy and when we had the GI's (diarrhea), we had to walk through the mud. When we would get back to the barracks we would have to pull off the muddy shoes so that we could go back to bed. Most of the time I didn't take my shoes off — just dangled my feet off the cot after the first run or two because we would no more than get in bed and have to go again. (My dad solved the fly problem in our outhouse with chemicals, the Army, no.)

      We each had our own stainless steel mess tray, knife, fork, and spoon and canteen (of which we used the big canteen cup). The knife, fork, and spoon had a hole in the handle and we hung them on a big stiff wire that was wired on to the tray. I noticed when we would be in the barracks that flies would be roosting on our utensils. When we left the mess hall, we would scrape off the leftovers into a garbage can. Then we would use a long handled brush and wash it all in a big soapy container of hot water, next rinse it in another container of clear hot water, and finally dunk them in another container of boiling water. I thought "What is the use of sterilizing them and then letting the flies roost on them?' So I would sterilize them both on leaving the mess hall and then on the way in. When we got flush toilets, things were a lot better.

      The Army did provide us with a lot of stuff to buy out of the PX. There was a lot of inflation so if we wanted to buy something from a Filipino, we traded for it. Women would come by with woven trays on their heads with fruit in them and offer to sell them. I found out that a bunch of bananas that cost a peso (50cents) could be gotten for two packages of gum costing 20 centavos (10 cents). From then on we traded to get things. Their bananas were very good. Since they weren't going to be shipped by boat thousands of miles, they picked them ripe and there was much more flavor. When I was having the GIs they were just about the only thing I could eat. We were allowed to buy a carton of cigarettes every week for one peso. I sold mine to the Filipinos for 10 or 11 pesos a carton.

      Having grown up in South Dakota in a great deal of drought the rain was quite a novelty to me. I sat out in the rain in a poncho and helmet liner watching movies in the rain several times before we got a place with a roof on it. They did manage to get some good movies to us.

      South Dakota only has about 650,000 people in the whole state but I ran into three different boys from Blunt, South Dakota while I was there, and another who was the class leader when I was teacher's pet in physics class. He had washed out and was in the Army Engineers at that time. Even over there it was a small world in some ways.

      I better sign this off before you get too tired reading my tame army experiences. A hero I was not — I helped court martial the AWOLs and was chief clerk in the Staff Judge Advocates Office of the Far East Air Service Command and attained the exalted rank of Tech Sergeant. I was no hero.

      Todd you are a good bright boy and can help your parents. Be as neat around the house as you can and make as few demands as possible that cost money, so that they can get through a time of financial difficulty. You might offer to mow the yard with that self-propelled lawn mower so that your dad won't have to do it. I believe you have more muscle than I do and I have to push my mower. (Just had to get in some advice.)

      Take care, we love you very much.

      Grandpa

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